The “trysails” are gaff or jib-headed sails sometimes carried on the fore and main, as the spanker is carried on the mizzen.  The gaff is held up by the throat and peak halliards, and kept in position by “vangs,” which come down to the rail as shown.  The spanker is sheeted home not by a sheet, but by an “outhaul,” and kept in position not by a “brace,” but by the “sheet,” and thereby differs from the square sails.

It will be noticed how neat and clean the ship is.  There is nothing outside to catch the wash of the sea or check the speed.  The boat’s davits and the dead-eyes of the lower rigging are all inside the bulwarks.  The cables have been unshackled and stowed in the lockers below, and the hawse-pipes are all plugged; the anchors are all inboard, and everything that could possibly act as a brake on her is removed.

Several large vessels now have four masts, in which case they are called “four-masters.”  When all the masts are square-rigged, the names are bowmast, foremast, main and mizzen.  If the aftermost mast is not square-rigged, the order is foremast, main, mizzen and jigger.  In some four-masters the masts are named fore, first-main, second-main and mizzen.

Should the vessel be three-masted, and have yards only on the two front masts, she is a “bark;” and, by-the-way, the spanker of a bark is her “mizzen.”  Should she have yards only, as the foremast, she is a “barkentine;” should she be a two-master, and have yards on both, she is a “brig;” should she have yards on the foremast only, she is a “brigantine.”

With regard to this, however, a few words of explanation are necessary.  A century or so ago, a favorite rig was the “snow,” pronounced so as to rhyme to “now.”  The snow was a bark with a lateen mizzen, or rather a brig with the “driver,” a lateen one, on a jigger mast, just a little abaft the mainmast.

When this jigger was abolished the sail retained its lateen shape, got on to the mainmast, and became what we may call a main crossjack, thereby rendering a square mainsail impossible.

When the crossjack was replaced by a gaff, the larger vessels started the square mainsail, and became “brigs,” while the smaller kept the spanker as their mainsail, and became “brigantines,” so that a genuine old brigantine is a brig without a square mainsail.

Soon, however, vessels appeared with no yards at all on their mainmasts, and these were called “hermaphrodite brigs,” and were found to be so handy that they crowded the old brigantines off the sea and took their name.

But here a qualification must come in.  Perhaps you have seen a two-masted vessel with yards on her foremast and none on her main.  She is a “topsail-schooner.”  In what does she differ from the brigantine?  The brigantine has a foremast of three spars from the old snow, and a mainmast of two from the hermaphrodite; the topsail-schooner has both foremast and mainmast of two spars, and the foresail on a gaff instead of on a yard, and in other ways is different, but a glance at the foremast is enough to distinguish her from a brigantine.